Crude oil futures crashed yesterday, despite a significant drop in US oil inventories on ideas that OPEC will fail to re-balance global oil markets with its supply quota. WTI Oil extended a drop under $50 per barrel and broke through $47 levels yesterday. The counter currently trades flat around $47 mark.

MCX Crude plummeted on these cues, sliding 2 percent to close around Rs 3000 per barrel mark. Some buying can emerge today if prices manage to hold above the key levels of Rs 3K.

The latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) data recorded an inventory draw of 8.95 million (mn) barrels for the week ending August 11th following a draw of 6.45 million barrels the previous week. The inventories have now dropped for seven straight weeks. Crude inventories dropped to 466.5 million barrels and were down 4.9 percent on the year.

Cushing inventories recorded a rise of 0.68mn barrels on the week after a build of 0.57mn barrels the previous week. Domestic crude production recorded a gain of 0.8 percent on the week at 9.50mn bpd and there was an increase of 10.5 percent over the year. Gasoline inventories were unchanged on the week with a 0.7 percent annual decline while distillate recorded a build of 0.7 million barrels with a year-on-year decline of 3.1 percent.